The banner headline in the front page of PUNCH Newspaper yesterday was that EFCC was set to invite Chief Olu Falae and Femi Fani-Kayode over the 2015 campaign funds. Part of the story read:
"It was learnt that the commission on Thursday revisited investigations into funding of former President Goodluck Jonathan's 2015 campaign. Saturday PUNCH learnt that with the arrest of former Finance Director of the Gooduck Jonathan Campaign Organisation, Nenadi Usman, the anti-graft commission had reopened its investigation into the funding of Jonathan's campaign."
I don't have issues with any funding being investigated. But even in the most unfair lands, it is obvious EFCC is playing a script. If two parties ran campaigns during a particular election and your attention is always focused on just one of them. I do NOT care what Buhari die hard supporters will say, this is another witch-hunting. Why? Anyone who had access to public funds from federal down to local government level during the campaigns should be invited by EFCC! None of them, I repeat: none of them can say he or she did not use public funds for campaigns for his or her party. And EFCC is very much AWARE of this! Above all, President Buhari himself should be in the dock to answer questions. I will come back to this shortly.
During the campaigns, some PR firms in the country were angry with APC for hiring two American PR firms to manage its communications. It was later learnt that each of these firms were paid a massive TEN MILLION DOLLARS each! I guess EFCC is not aware of this. Or where the money came from. No wonder Fani-Kayose asked the EFCC to invite Amaechi and Fashola too.
I told a lawyer friend of mine (who might be reading this) that the president should be held vicariously liable for corruption. He asked how.
This is it: if I am paying my gateman N40,000 a month and I want to contest for local government chairman and my gateman brings me N5m as his "contribution" and I collect without asking questions, I am a thief. I should have asked how my gateman came about such money! During the campaigns, if a governor, known to the current president, (then a candidate) contributed N10b to his campaign and he did not ask questions then, HE HAS NO MORAL JUSTIFICATION TO PROBE ANY CAMPAIGN FUNDS NOW! Why? He should know that if a sitting governor spends just N1b on non-public cause, then HE MUST HAVE ILLEGALLY DIVERTED PUBLIC FUNDS TO DO THAT since it was not in any budget nor was it a public expenditure. Therefore, an act of corruption has taken place.
It has been established that funds from Lagos and Rivers States were used to finance the president's campaign. So will EFCC invite Amaechi (Buhari's campaign director) the way it invited Usman? This is my suggestion:
Let a Public Investigating Committee, PIC, be set up on the fundings of the 2015 campaigns. Let people submit memorandum/petitions to it. Either from PDP or APC. Give it powers to invite ANYONE accused. NO MATTER HIS OR HER STATUS. Let it be such that the committee will have powers to recommend people for prosecution. How? Its findings and recommendations will NOT be subject to any executive vetting and tampering. It is from the Committee straight to court.
I want to see who, including the president, will remain standing.
Enough of pretense please...
~ Samuel Ajay
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